The present invention relates to data processing systems, and more specifically, to a method, system, and computer program product for implementing automated worklists.
Paper checklists (also referred to as worklists) have been used for many years as a way of organizing work. In some applications, such as the aviation industry, such worklists are an important part of aviation preflight processes. The user (also referred to assignee of the worklist) processes each member (e.g., action item) on the list and checks it off when it is completed. When all of the members on the worklist have been checked off, the user knows he/she is done.
In the computer world, there are two analogs for these worklists: static reports and dynamic reports. A static report is generated at a certain point in time and does not change. After the static report is generated, none of the data in the report changes. By contrast, a dynamic report is generated whenever the user wants to see it, and is capable of providing the most current data.
A report could be used as a worklist, whereby the user processes each member in the report and checks each member off when complete. However, if a dynamic report is used, the members in the report could change while the user is processing them, since all of the data is updateable. From a psychological and planning point of view, traditional (static) worklists have two benefits compared to dynamic reports: (1) the user of the worklist can scan the list and estimate how much work is left, and (2) every time the user checks off a member, he/she knows that he/she is one member closer to finishing the worklist. Since the contents of a dynamic report can change, dynamic reports lose these two benefits of the static checklists. While a static report does not suffer from these drawbacks, it also doesn't have all of the benefits of automation (e.g., with automation, it is possible to provide up-to-date information about the members in the report/worklists, but a static report does not allow for this benefit).
What is needed, therefore, is a way to create an automated worklist that contains members that are static, but also contains information about the members that is dynamic.